A fascinating glimpse of the clash of Western and Muslim
cultures. Faithfully translated into modern English, unembellished and unedited, this illuminating
historical source reads as if its Elizabethan author were alive now.

In 1598 merchants of the City of London paid for a Present
to be given by Queen Elizabeth to Sultan Mehmet III of Turkey. In return
the merchants hoped to secure trading concessions, and the Virgin Queen
to turn the Sultan's military might on her Spanish enemies.

The Present
was a carved, painted and gilded cabinet about sixteen feet high, six
feet wide and five feet deep. It contained a chiming
clock with jewel-encrusted moving figures combined with an automatic
organ, which could play tunes on its own for six hours - or by hand.

The Present was dismantled and dispatched on a merchant
ship early in 1599. It took six months to get from London to
Constantinople. With it went four craftsmen. They were Thomas Dallam the
organ builder, John Harvey the engineer, Michael Watson the carpenter
and Rowland Buckett the painter. Dallam was just twenty four years old.

On their odyssey they encountered storms, volcanoes, exotic
animals, foreign food, good wine, pirates, brigands, Moors, Turks,
Greeks, Jews, beautiful women, barbarous men, kings and pashas, armies
on the march, janissaries, eunuchs, slaves, dwarves and finally the most
powerful man in the known world, the Great Turk himself.

The
Sultan was so impressed by this marvel of British technology that he
offered Dallam a permanent job, with two virgins included in the
remuneration package, and granted England vital trading concessions.

Dallam was the
first foreigner to record a glimpse into the Sultan's harem. And the
first to make an overland crossing of mainland Greece. The
Sultan's Organ is a wonderful traveler's tale that will entertain and
inform travellers to Greece and Turkey and fans of Elizabethan history.

For those of us who have an insular and nationalistic
vision of Elizabethan England formed by Shakespeare, school history,
film and TV, Dallam's diary opens up the wider world that Elizabethans
lived in. Many English people of all types and social class made their
homes in the Mediterranean. Two Muslim Turkish interpreters worked with
Dallam. One was born in Lancashire and the other in Cornwall.

We most often see Elizabethan England through the eyes of
the aristocratic and wealthy. Thomas Dallam gives us the point of view
of the skilled working man. He has not been to grammar school or
university so does not distort the scenery with classical or biblical
references and when he tries usually gets it wrong. He writes fluently
and colloquially in an English not deformed by classical education. He
writes what he sees and experiences as plainly as he can. Above all he
has an open mind towards foreigners. His attitude to Turks and Muslims
is conditioned by the racism and paranoia of his age but when he
actually meets them he interacts without prejudice.

My purpose is to let Dallam describe his experiences
without the impediments of spelling, vocabulary and grammar peculiar to
Elizabethan English and without the distraction of footnotes and
references. I have resisted the temptation to edit the boring or
repetitive bits as they give a rhythm to the journey and a setting for
the fascinating passages. I have translated the place names into their
modern equivalents so you can follow the journey on an atlas or Google.

The Sultan was the most
powerful ruler in the world. No foreigner, unless they were a concubine
or a eunuch, ever came closer to him than Thomas Dallam. He played for
the Sultan, touched him, received gold from his pocket. He is the first
foreigner to peek inside the Sultan's harem and live to write about it.
He is the first to describe an overland journey in Greece. For these
alone his diary is worth reading. But mainly it is because he tells a
great story.

We left our boats at Hora and
went three miles to the town of Ganos . We could not go any further
along the sea for it is so hilly and wooded, a veritable wilderness. So
we spent the day and the night there on the lookout for our boats, but
they did not come. We had a good look around the town and did not think
much of the people's living conditions so our leader, Mr Glover, found a
house for us to stay in near the shore. The town was on a hill and this
house was on a cliff the height of St Paul's overlooking the sea. We had
to go up a ladder onto a balcony built on the side of the house with a
little door into a room with only bare boards to sleep on. For the whole
time we were on the road we never took off our clothes or found a bed to
sleep in. In this room there was not so much as a stool or a bench to
sit on or anything else except a shelf with two jugs and two earthenware
plates. There was no window and the only light came through a little
hole in the stone wall.

We arrived at the town before noon and, after a quick
dinner, passed the time by walking down to the edge of a wood beside the
sea. It was abandoned and unexploited by the look of it. We saw many
wild animals that we do not have in England. As it was getting dark and
remembering how hard the beds were in our new hostelry, we found thick,
soft vegetation at the edge of the wood. Every one of us gathered a
bundle of it to sleep on. When night fell and we had had our supper
every man chalked his place on the bare boards. Our janissary chose a
board that was loose on the joists. We all kept our swords beside us.
Two of us had muskets. We had been lying down for half an hour when
those of us who had weed pillows were suddenly attacked by insects that
bit much worse than fleas. We were glad to throw our pillows away and
swept the house clean. But we could not get off to sleep. As we lay
awake in that dark, uncomfortable house Mr Glover, who had lived a long
time in those parts, told us about the strange animals he had seen. He
talked a lot about adders, snakes and reptiles, the differences between
them and how big they were.

We passed the time talking of such things until most of us
fell asleep and those who could not lay quietly and said nothing so as
not to disturb the others. All was quiet. Mr Bailey needed to go outside
to relieve himself. The little door opened onto the balcony. The wind
was blowing hard and made a lot of noise for the house was exposed to
the sea and the elements. When he lay down Mr Bailey untied his garters.
One of them was loose and trailed behind him and when he went onto the
balcony the wind blew it round the other leg. It was a long silk garter
and the strong wind wrapped it round his legs. Our talk of adders and
snakes and reptiles was still in his mind. He imagined they swarmed
around him and was convinced there was a snake round his legs. He
shouted at the top of his voice "A snake! A snake! A snake!"
He was so terrified he could not find the door to get back in and
blundered about the balcony and made a great din. The rest of us inside

the house thought he said "Attacked!
Attacked!" During the day we suspected they were plotting against
us in the town so now we thought the house was surrounded with men
determined to cut our throats.

There were fifteen of us in that little room. It was around
midnight and very dark. We seized our swords and were about to attack
each other for no reason. One man could not find his sword and tried to
climb up the chimney, which collapsed on top of him. Another man woke up
suddenly and lashed out with his sword and knocked down the shelf with
the jugs and plates and smashed them. Others thought they were pulling
the house down around our heads. Startled by the sudden noise, our
janissary, who was supposed to be guarding us and protecting us from
danger, and who also suspected the townspeople, took up the board he was
lying on and slipped down into the cellar. In the midst of the panic Mr
Bailey at last found the door. Seeing him come in Mr Glover said
"Hey, what's going on, who's out there?" Mr Bailey, gasping
with fear and shouting and struggling to get in the door, could not
answer at first. At last he said "A snake! A snake attacked
me!" As soon as he heard this Mr Glover's fears evaporated. He went
outside and found Mr Bailey's garter blowing away in the wind.

We were astounded that something so trivial had caused such
panic. Then Mr Glover had a roll call to see if anyone had been killed
or wounded. There were sixteen of us with weapons drawn in that little
room. We were all alive and with only some minor injuries. Then we
discovered that our janissary was missing. He was probably embarrassed
to tell us where he was. Mr Glover shouted for him several times until
he answered from the cellar. There was no way he could get out. Mr
Gonzale took up the board where he went down and lying on the floor just
managed to reach his hand. They pulled him up without difficulty. When
he jumped into the cellar he was very frightened and took off his top
coat. He left it in the cellar and could not be persuaded to go down
again to fetch it. It was horrible down there and it seemed he was
scared of the same sort of thing that frightened Mr Bailey. His coat
stayed there until morning when the owner of the house fetched it out.